Penguins

[ellarien]

The campus bookstore is spacious, and it carries many things besides books: university apparel, of course, stationery and art supplies, dorm-room bits and pieces and expensive purses/totes/backpacks, DVDs and mobile phones and a few mostly seasonal toys and games. They also have ... strange things. Expensive strange things, mostly; foot-tall parrots sculptured in semi-precious stones, bronze eagles, colorful Oaxacan wood carvings. I bought one of the eagles myself in a moment of weakness when I'd just had a large pay raise, but I don't know who, if anyone, buys most of these things.

The last year or so, they've been carrying the collectible "painted ponies", both in tabletop and tree-ornament size. Those have a certain kitschy poetry to them; the life-sized versions that did a tour of the local malls a few years back were actually quite impressive. The cows and wiener dogs are similar in concept -- figurines in colorful thematic costume/decorations -- but jokier in execution; three-dimensional cartoons that raise a transient smile, and I'm not sure what to make of the wolves, though I think those are supposed to be more in the poetic line. Now they've been joined by small, rather fat, penguins, definitely cartoonish. I suppose someone must want to own a shelf-full of such things, but why? To my jaundiced eye, they're a funny-once, if that, and thereafter a dust-trap. I like to get a story with my discretionary spending, not just a one-liner, or if not that, something that will occupy my hands and spare brain-circuits while I make up my own stories.

Comments

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

I actually read Misery, and one of the pieces of kitsch that the, uhm, Cathy Bates character has in her collection is a sad-eyed little penguin sitting on an ice cube with the legend "Now My Tail is Told" on it. Seems like just reading about it is enough.

On the other hand, we bought some ST:TNG penguins made from Sculpy or some such, many years ago, and though they're falling to pieces now, I still can't bring myself to toss the silly things. Soon, probably.

[ellarien]

These penguins aren't quite that sad, but they don't appeal to me. Now if they had them in Irwin-Allenesque naval uniforms, I might be tempted ...